Nature Mindfulness

Mindfulness in nature is the art of transforming your inner self with the help of the natural world. It is about building a relationship with something that’s older, larger, and wiser that yourself. In addition, outdoor mindfulness activities offer you fun ways to practice mindfulness in a group setting.

Nature mindfulness activities benefit not only the mind, but also the body and our relationships. Group mindfulness activities cultivate deeper connections, fostering warmth, joy, and understanding. They create strong, caring communities that support one another in times of need, just as a forest supports its individual trees.

*Don’t miss our collection of the best mindfulness activities from around the world at the end of this post. These outdoor mindfulness activities will flow in peace and wellness into your life. Please try them out with the people who matter to you.

7 Outdoor Mindfulness Activities for Groups

All the mindfulness group activities integrate elements of nature, which makes it easy for beginners to access the concept of mindfulness. The groups not only achieve the benefits of mindfulness, but also the multiple health benefits of being outdoors.

“The essence of nature mindfulness is to dissolve boundaries –
between inner nature and outer nature,
between you, me, us, and them.”

These mindful activities and exercises can be done solo or with friends and family. With nature and mindfulness you can overcome many challenges that one faces while holding group activities. The more diverse your group is, the more insightful its results. Try these outdoor mindfulness activities for adults and kids and make mindfulness easy, engaging, and fun for all ages.

Mindfulness Activity: Language of the Birds

What is the difference between regular bird-watching and mindful birding? While our eyes make up the primary sense for the former, the most important sense for mindful birding is our ears. Rather than counting the number of different birds that we can see, our focus is on learning how to create calm with the help of the birds.

Mindful Listening

We recommend keeping all cameras and phones away. Once you find a space that has sufficient bird activity, ask the group members to find a spot for themselves and sit in silence.

Listen to the closest bird.
Listen to the farthest bird.
Listen to the birds in different directions.
Listen to the silence in between the birdcalls.
Listen for conversations. Follow the sound of a particular species and imagine what the birds are trying to say?

The group can share their stories, insights and learning at the end of the session.

Spending time with the birds in a mindful way leads to some beautiful insights. Here one such story from a flock of swifts by Helen Macdonald, Author H is for Hawk.

“Swifts have, of late, become my fable of community, teaching us about how to make right decisions in the face of oncoming bad weather. They aren’t always cresting the atmospheric boundary layer at dizzying heights; most of the time they are living below it in thick and complicated air. That’s where they feed and mate and bathe and drink and are. But to find out about the important things that will affect their lives, they must go higher to survey the wider scene, and there communicate with others about the larger forces impinging on their realm.”

Just like the birds, sometimes we have to let our minds soar above our day to day worries and see our lives from a higher perspective. Mindfulness allows us to do that, helping us discover wiser choices for our future.

Mindfulness Activity: Inner Balance

Mindfulness creates a balance of attention and awareness. The real goal of mindfulness is not just paying attention to the mind, but creating an awareness of its true nature.

Balance exercises have found to be very helpful in relieving stress and reducing inner tension. Additionally, they improve focus, concentration and memory. Finally, the unquestionable benefit of the mindfulness activity is the ability to control emotions in critical and stressful moments. The simple act of balancing stones is a very powerful mindfulness technique.

Mindful Awareness

The activity starts by collecting suitable stones and in the first round participants work on their own to see how high can they make their stone towers.

In the next round the same activity is done in pairs, but in silence, without any exchange of words. Once all the pairs have created their stone towers, we dismantle all the stone towers for the final round.

The final round, also done in pairs involves creating an inverted pyramid of stones – with the smaller stones at the base, and larger stones on the top.

Instead of just focusing on stacking the stones, pay attention to the center of gravity of each stone. With patience one can find out the exact alignment between two stones, which leads to the equilibrium of balance. At the end of this exercise, the group can sit in a circle and spend a little time to contemplate things that bring balance to their lives.

Mindfulness in nature, offers you a gateway
to understand and transform your own inner nature.

Fun Mindfulness Activities For Groups

There is a common myth that mindfulness has to be a very serious practice. However mindfulness in nature teaches us something very useful. To turn any activity into a habit, you have first learn how to have fun with it. If you don’t enjoy the process, it is difficult to sustain.

The mindless entertainment we engage in through television or social media may keep our attention focused, but it does not provide rest to our mind. On the contrary it over-stimulates it. One can see its impact in depleted attention spans, reduced concentration, and poor memory.

Here is a collection of 3 outdoor mindfulness activities that make use of the leaves for mindful immersion. These activities help you create some unique artworks, especially in Autumn.

Creative Mindfulness

Leaf Tracing: Pick any leaf. You choose a simple one or a complex shape. Trace the outline of the leaf with your eyes as slow as you can. Move from one edge of the base, all the way around to the complete the loop. This exercise is an excellent way to slow down your thoughts.

Leaf Collage: Group members work in pairs. Using different leaves they have to create a mythical or magical forest creature. Use the imagination to escape into a hidden world. This simple exercise raises the energy levels of the group. So the group leader must ensure that the silence of the group does not get lost.

Leaf Mandala: Each person in the group is assigned to collects leaves of a particular colour or shape. The group then works as one unit to create a geometric design on the forest floor using all the different leaves they have collected. It could be concentric circles, spirals, or a four-sided maze.

*TIP: Zoom Mindfulness Activities: As an interesting experiment, share these activities with friends who may be in different cities. Ask them to do any of these nature mindfulness activities at their own convenience. Schedule a Zoom session / call later to exchange insights. It creates a beautiful experience of learning and growing with each other. 

Mindfulness Activity: Mushroom Lessons

While observing the breath is a very common mindfulness exercise, people who are going through a difficult phase in life find it very challenging because of troubling thoughts. Therefore, we should start with other senses first, especially when introducing mindfulness to beginners. Our visual sense can be a powerful ally. Turning to nature to observe and discover its many treasures shall fill us with awe, wonder, and deep calm.

Mindful Observation

When you enter the woods to search for mushrooms you have to be alert, silent, and calm.  By being mindful of your steps as you walk in the forest gently, you can turn this rewarding activity into an exercise in mindfulness.

NOTE: Be sure to buy a good field guide for mushrooms from your area or go with an expert. Some basic instructions for Mushroom Walks, as per the Modern Forager are given below.

1. Tread Lightly. Don’t trample all the little mushrooms and potential mushrooms in your hunting ground.
2. Make a positive identification using more than one source wherever possible. “When in doubt, just leave the mushroom.”
3. Mature mushrooms release spores into the air that are essentially mushroom seeds. You can respect the spores by leaving some of the mushrooms untouched.
4. Don’t use plastic bags — which can ruin your harvest anyways; look for mesh bags, baskets, buckets with holes drilled in them.
5.  Micro-trash is a big problem! Try to leave none and collect some if you see any.

Mindfulness Activity: Power of Awe

One of the most effective nature mindfulness activities for adults involves focusing on the emotion of awe, and wonder. It helps to shift our attention from the negative cycles of our mind that pull us down, to a more positive frame of mind.

For this mindfulness group activity we can either use the treasure-hunt model where the group goes out into nature and collects object based on a pre-given list, or we can ask the group members to just take a photograph of the objects.

For larger groups it is better to use photographs as it creates a lesser impact on the surrounding. The simple rule all participants need to follow is that you can only take one photograph per activity on the list. By restricting the number of photographs, we get the group members to be more mindful of each shot they take. With this single rule we can turn our device of distraction into a mode of meditation.

Mindful Appreciation

One thing that makes you smile.
One thing that brings you calm.
One that fills you with hope.
One thing that makes you curious.
One thing that fills you with awe.
One thing that you are thankful for in nature.

What happens when we experience wonder? By Katie Steedly
People get along. When people are struck with wonder, they generally are not yelling, arguing, fighting, or angry. Wonder brings people together. We all agree that flowers are wonderful. We all agree that ducklings are wonderful. We all agree that coral reefs are wonderful. Butterflies? Wonderful. Chocolate? Wonderful. Sunsets? Wonderful. Wonder provides a moment where we can hold hands, (perhaps) tear up, and find common ground. The noise of life fades. A silence akin to speechlessness falls when we experience wonder. A gentle hush that is beyond words eases tension. Reflection paints wonderful moments with reverence. Wonder is calm in the chaos of the world. 

The ability of Nature to inspire awe and wonder are one of the big factors that contribute to its healing effects on our mind. After a mindfulness in nature session, brain scans showed a sizeable reduction of blood flow to the subgenual prefrontal cortex region. It is a region linked to sadness, withdrawal and general grumpiness.

Mindfulness Activity: Growing Kindness

Community service as an outdoor mindfulness activity is an essential way of channelizing group energies for creating positive transformations. One such exercise involves creating or working in community gardens.

Mindful Service

FOOD GARDEN: South Central Los Angeles, USA is a food desert – an area filled with liquor stores, fast food chains and vacant lots. Tired of driving 45 minutes to buy food that is not chemically treated, Ron Finley decided to turn some of those unused plots, starting with the patch in front of his house, into a food forest. With obesity rates 5X higher in South Central than in Beverly Hills, a neighbourhood only 8 to 10 miles away, Finley realized that food is the problem, but is also the solution. “The drive-throughs are killing more people than drive-bys”, he says. Finley and a group of volunteer gardeners from all over Los Angeles are changing that, one lot at a time. “Growing your own food is like printing your own money.”

MEDITATION GARDEN: A meditation garden is an island of tranquility which allows you to connect with nature and with yourself. It offers you a space to plant seeds of peace, hope, wonder, and joy within you. With a few simple nature elements you can transform any garden into a meditation garden. The heart of a meditation garden, beyond its visual appeal and the calming aesthetics is the thought, practice, and care which goes into connecting with your garden.

A true meditation garden is not about the space you have on ground, rather it is about creating the relation between your mind and your garden.

Mindfulness in Nature

All life exists in relationship. Through mindfulness in nature, we learn to explore our relationships with self, others and the world around us. Seeing a part of our “self” in everything, and a part of everything in our “self,” is a powerful and valuable experience offered by these nature mindfulness activities.

Watch our short 1.5 minute film from India for a calming, meditative journey.

Our progress in mindfulness reflects in our behaviour, our actions, and our communities. The ability to create mindful groups as well as families is an invaluable gift. Given below are some useful resources so you can create countless mindfulness in nature experiences.

Mindfulness Activities for Adults & Kids

Learn how to cultivate a calm mind, a healthy body, and deep relationships through nature. Discover some of the best outdoor mindfulness activities for adults and families.

This collection of outdoor mindfulness activities is just a small selection from our treasure trove. To get useful new ideas once a month, join our free newsletter.

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Healing Forest is a project that aims to bring people and forests closer to each other through creativity and mindfulness. Our goal is to create is a calmer, healthier, and kinder world.